Ramblings of a post-denominational frummer yid. Comments to benchorin613@yahoo.com

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The recent events in Neve Daniel and Hevron are very painful ones for a number of reasons.

Last week, a small organic farm and stable ("Sde Boaz"), on which a small house had been built, was razed by the Israeli army and police. The house was indeed built without permits and one could technically make a legal case for taking it down. However, the action raises a number of important questions. First, one of Sharon's central arguments for disengagement had been that it would help secure settlement blocs in Yehudah and Shomron. The settlement bloc around which there is greatest consensus is Gush Etzion. Sde Boaz is at the epicenter of Gush Etzion, surrounded by Jewish towns and at its highest and perhaps most strategic spot. If any location in any settlement bloc at all were to remain in Israeli hands, it would be Sde Boaz. Furthermore, it happens that the area around Sde Boaz has recently begun to be cultivated illegally by Arabs for the sole purpose of making subsequent unfounded claims on the land. The police claim they are "powerless" to stop it. Finally, in removing a bunch of protesting kids from the area in order to destroy it, police used pepper spray and tear gas in cramped closed quarters and beat up some kids in a vicious and gratuitous way. (An aside: the soldiers sent out there are generally kid-next-door types who got stuck with a lousy job and the cops are just low-class losers. But the "Yasamnikim" are largely anti-semitic Russian goyim; the kids relate to them as you would to any goons for hire.)

As for the standoff in Hevron, it's important to know the facts. Twelve Jewish families are being evicted from homes they have salvaged and refurbished in what was once known as the "shuk ha-sitonai" and is now called Mitzpe Shalhevet. The land in question was last owned by Kollel Sefaradim Magen Avot and fell into Arab hands after the Arabs massacred the Jews of Hevron in 1929. It was then taken over by the Jordanian custodian of abandoned property. There is some dispute about whether it then reverted to the original owners, who have asked the Jewish community of Hevron to see to it that it is rented to Jews, or if it is to be administered by the Israeli custodian of abandoned property. A judicial committee ruled for the latter and recommended that the custodian rent the property to Jews. The Defense Ministry, as recently as a few weeks ago, agreed with this recommendation. AG Mazuz has decided not to accept the recommendation and to throw the current residents out "in order that they not be rewarded for having moved in without permission". The Jewish community had agreed that, to abide by the AG's decision, the current residents would move out and other Jews would move in instead in an orderly fashion. The AG refused and all hell has broken out.

One cannot help but note the mean-spiritedness of both these actions by the government and wonder to whose political advantage all this is. But there is something much sadder about this and many related events. There are hundreds of teenagers who have been turned into anarchists. I mean this quite literally. Kids from nice middle-class frum homes (many of them kids of Olim from the U.S.) have dropped out of high school, grown wild peyos ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), and now bop around aimlessly with guitars in between looking for fights with the army. This is not healthy. These kids have been shattered by the betrayal of every organization in this country that is meant to represent law and order. Individually, they are lost souls crying out for help. Collectively, they are dangerous. Unfortunately, the government is doing everything possible to further alienate them.

5 Comments:

You explained this very well, and pointed out a problem that worries me greatly.

One additional point about the teenagers. It is not just our governments actions regarding the Gush Katif disengagement that has caused these teenagers to become "anarchists". It is the fact that they grew up watching Arab terror WIN. They saw innocent people being killed - and the arch terrorist get the peace prize. They saw suicide bombers being "understood" and justified by the world press and the leftis media here in Israel.

Children learn by what we DO and not what we say. If the intifada (one and two) led to the Arabs being rewarded (getting all of Gush Katif) then it isn't a great leap to thinking that might makes right. Our chinuch is being thrown out of the window.

When Olmert says, "This is a fight over the rule of law," I do not hear a call for justice, I hear the call of Sodom. (“One who says, ‘My property is mine and yours is yours’ is a man of average character; some say this is the character of Sodom.” Pirkei Avot 5:13.)

Gush Etzion is no more consensus than any other settlement block. In the 1970's at the same time that Yitzchak Rabin was personally approving the establishment of Netzarim which he viewed as a strategic settlement, he was quoted as saying that it wouldn't bother him to have to present a passport to visit the Etzion bloc. The "consensus" idea is simply brainwashing by the establishment powers that be in Gush Etzion in order to keep the flock docile. The most notable advocate of this idea is Shaul Goldstein the myaor of the Gush Etzion Regional Council and memeber of the Yesha Forum, who repeats this ad nauseum in nearly every public communique to residents of Gush Etzion. The events at Sde Boaz - which have been repeated in parts of Efrat and other locations "within" the fence - only prove that the disengagegement had NOTHING to do with securing settlement blocs. There is not one quote that can be attributed to Sharon from the time he announced the plan, that indicates that this was his thinking. This is again a self-dialogue of the deaf and brainwashing by Goldstein & Co. to keep everyone docile.

The situation in Hevron is simply a case of Haratzachta V'gam Yarashta. The Government of Israel indeed recognized the confiscation of abandoned Jewish property on the part of the Jordanian custodian. In many instances it was a confiscation.

On the subject of keeping everyone docile, I'm not sure that it's necessarily the government that has caused the youth to drop out of school and become anarchists. They are looking for direction and it's clear that the "mamlachtiyut" of their parents will not keep them still for long. They need direction. Thinking people need to get together and think about the message we want to pass onto our kids vis-a-vis our relationship to the State and its organs. It's pretty clear that there is a large segment of the National religious community who will not accept either the brit historit of the religious left or the mamlachtiyut ad eyn sof of Har Hamor, Ateret Koahnim, Horev, etc. These kids need to be told why they will go into the army if they don't want to be used to throw a Jew out of his home. and if they're not told why, they'll "go wild". The stock answers from Moti Elon that his pupils pass on as teachers in the high schools just won't cut it any more. The kids are too smart (and a bit jaded ) for that.

Also, many of these kids are jaded as a result of career oriented parents who are frequently out of the house or busy with work and not paying enough attention to the children. Nice middle-class homes doesn't necessarily correlate with good parenting - and often enough nice upper-middle class homes (common to Gush Etzion) means bad parenting. To lay this at the feet of the government seems a bit of a cop-out to me. I am very well acquainted with a local social worker in the area who can lay out this aspect of the situation more clearly than I can.

Haggai Segal in Makor Rishon quoted David Landau (who is by the way, a kippah wearer) as saying essentially that the mitnahalim and the hitnahaluyot are the cause of every problem Israel has...the settlements are "avodah zara", "false messianism",etc. There is no limit to the hatred that he, his boss Shocken and the rest of the extreme Left has. Of course, he doesn't look at his own "guilt" at living in Israel and what was done in 1948, for this group it is 1967 that is the problem, and whatever violence that is used against "these evil people" is justified. Thus, now that the government is pretty much 100% in the hands of these people, they will use whatever lies and violence to get their way in eradicating their "enemy"-the National Religious Camp."Settler" is absolutely right, we who believe in Zionism but who are alienated from the regime need to get together and TALK, TALK, TALK because we are at a crossroads. Right after the pogrom of Gush Katif there were some meetings and forums, but they all seem to have stopped and I think this is disastrous. Now, the elections will further sidetrack everyone from what needs to be done.Is there anyone out there who cares?